street and Lyle offered her a steadying hand.
She sighed. “Thank you, thank you. I was about to go down for the third time. My whole life was flashing before my eyes.”
“I’m headin’ back to the boat.”
“Good. I’ll walk along with you.”
“The others know what time we’re shovin’ off?”
Marisa nodded. “They know.”
They passed a church and Marisa stopped and looked up at it. “Beautiful, just beautiful. I think I have this one on a postcard I bought yesterday.” She patted her handbag.
“Aye, it’s lovely,” said Jack Lyle. “It’s one of the few old buildin’s left. The people ’ere tore down most of em and put up stores, factories, and the like. They even tore down the large castle and used the stone to rebuild their houses after the civil wars.”
Marisa pointed to the church. “Those heads carved in stone. What are they, some kind of saints?”
Lyle nodded. “A few are. A few ain’t. It was a Celtic custom to cut off the heads of their enemies and use them to defend their holy places. Churches all over England have these heads inside and out, and nobody knows it started with the bloody pagans.”
Marisa said, “Is that where the use of gargoyles came from? There are cathedrals here and in France where you find the ugliest gargoyles perched on top—”
Lyle laughed. “You’re right about that, missy. It’s the same thing as the severed ’eads. Them gargoyles were made ’orrible lookin’ so as to scare the evil spirits away from a house of worship. There’s worse than that, I might add. The Druids, them what used to be priests to the old Celts, they worshiped the oak tree and if they ever caught a man peelin’ the bark off an oak or breakin’ off its limb, they pulled out his guts and wrapped them around the tree. You know, an eye for an eye, a skin to replace the skin that was taken. A limb from the person what cut a limb from the tree.”
Marisa shuddered. “It’s hard to believe people once actually did that sort of thing to each other, Mr. Lyle. I’m glad I’m living in the twentieth century where the Druids are something you read about and can put out of your mind.”
She was looking at Jack Lyle as she spoke and noticed him blink and look away. It was as though a shadow had passed over his small brown face. For a few seconds Lyle looked at the severed heads over the huge wooden church doors. Then abruptly he began walking away from Marisa.
“Mr. Lyle? Mr. Lyle?”
She ran to catch up with him and when she did something told her to say nothing. Together they returned to the boat in silence. At the boat Lyle looked at her then said, “Sorry, missy. I was thinkin’ about a few things. You get to be my age and you got a lot of things runnin’ round in yer ’ead. Most of yer life’s in the past and you live as much in yer imagination as out. I’m goin’ to work on the engine some.”
Marisa nodded. When he’d disappeared below she stared at the open door he’d gone through and wondered what was really on his mind. As an actress she was too sensitive not to suspect that something was bothering Jack Lyle.
She quickly dismissed the idea that it had anything to do with the severed stone heads that he’d been staring at.
Robert, red faced from drinking, leaned back in his chair and said to Jack Lyle, “You’re a liar.”
The little boatman narrowed his eyes.
“Jack Liar,” smirked Robert. “There’s really not much difference between Lyle and Liar, is there?”
“Robert!” Marisa wanted to slap his face. It wouldn’t have been the first time.
“Never mind, missy,” said Lyle. “This one’s the talkin’ kind. Let’s ’ear ’im out.”
The Drake was moored for the night in a quiet cove on the canal. Marisa and Lyle had been topside talking while below Robert, Larry, Nat and Ellie played bridge to the music of Larry’s cassette. Robert, filled with brandy, was becoming a nasty drunk. When he heard the rattling noise in the boat’s
David Bernstein
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